


You Live In Someone Else's Legacy

by fishoutofcamelot



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of homophobia, No Beta We Die Like Elyan, OC-centric, Reincarnation AU, a lot of screaming, also gwen listens to VOCALOID because shes COOL like that, also someone literally explodes, and YOU get daddy issues! and YOU get daddy issues! everyone gets daddy issues!, everyone is either gay or trans. and gwen is both because she deserves it, like. i dont describe it graphically. but just know that it happens, read beginning a/n for trigger warnings, there is a lot of screaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28852560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishoutofcamelot/pseuds/fishoutofcamelot
Summary: Arthur died before learning that Gwen was pregnant with his son. He died fully unaware that he was a father. His son, on the other hand, is fully aware of who his dad is - and has a list of reasons to hate the old man's guts.OR: some dads take their kid to a baseball game. Arthur takes his kid to therapy.
Relationships: Arthur Pendragon & OC, Gwen & Merlin (Merlin), Gwen & OC, Gwen/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin & OC
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	You Live In Someone Else's Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS:  
> \- Implied/Mentioned Domestic Violence  
> \- Implied/Mentioned Abuse  
> \- Implied/Mentioned Attempted Suicide  
> \- Mild Blood and Gore  
> \- Hospitals  
> \- Death By Fire
> 
> If there's any other triggers you feel need to be tagged, please let me know! <3

Llacheu Pendragon’s - admittedly vague - first memory is of his mother. He is two years old and she is wearing a cream-colored dress that billows out from her waist. She has a friendly smile, yet her soft brown eyes are wet in a way Llacheu cannot yet comprehend. He toddles towards her, and she cheers as he stumbles into her lap. She sweeps him up into her strong arms, presses a kiss to his forehead, and says, “Your father would be so, so proud of you.” Her voice trembles, but Llacheu does not yet possess the verbage to ask her why. 

His second memory is of the man who _technically_ isn’t his father, but was more of a father to him then his real dad could ever be. He is tall and lanky and has shaggy black hair, and struggles to conceal his weariness behind a bright smile while he takes Llacheu firefly-catching for the first time. Llacheu may be four years old, but even he can see how Merlin is tired and sad all the time - even when he’s laughing. _Especially_ when he’s laughing.

Llacheu is tempted to ask about it, but he doesn’t want to make Merlin even sadder, so he pretends he doesn’t see Merlin’s grief. They both cheer when Llacheu jars the first firefly of the night, and then set it free immediately thereafter.

His third memory is of his two self-ascribed ‘uncles’, Leon and Percival. He is five now, and proudly proclaims that this means he’s old enough to become a knight just like them. They both let out a twin pair of hearty, if slightly subdued, laughs.

“That’s Arthur’s son alright,” says Uncle Percival.

Uncle Leon snorts. “With all the mischief he gets up to, you’d think he was _Gwaine’s_.”

“Who’s Arfur?” asks Llacheu, gripping the edge of Uncle Percival’s trousers in earnest. 

That sobers them up in an instant, like water over a flame. Hesitantly, Uncle Percival pulls Llacheu up onto his knee, watery blue eyes locking with Llacheu’s youthful brown ones. “...Arthur was your...father.”

Father. There’s that word again.

Come to think of it, most of Llacheu’s earliest memories are of people talking about his father. How proud he’d be of his son, how his father was a great man, how much his father loved him - 

Which is a lie, as Llacheu discovers when he’s seven. Father - _Arthur -_ never loved him. He died before he even knew he had a son to love in the first place. Mother insists that he would love Llacheu if he knew, and Merlin insists that Arthur _does_ love him while he watches all that they do from his place in Avalon.

Everyone always clamors to sing his father’s praises at any given opportunity. Talking about how brave and compassionate and wise he was, even though Llacheu thinks he sounds like a massive git. Gwen and Merlin tell him about the time his father was turned into a half-donkey as a bedtime story, and his uncles narrate Arthur’s many brave deeds while gathered around a campfire, and Gaius weakly reeds his fingers through Llacheu’s curly hair as he rasps, “You look just like your father.” Those are Gaius’s last words to him before he passes away in his sleep.

Llacheu finds a painting of his father when he is eight years old, and decides then and there that he looks _nothing_ like his father. Where Arthur’s hair is blonde and straight, Llacheu’s is curly and black. Where Arthur’s eyes are blue and cold, Llacheu’s are brown - almost black - and warm. Where Arthur is all stock and no height, Llacheu takes more after Merlin in terms of physicality. He looks more like his mother, in his opinion. 

But somehow, they all see his father in him. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t want to.

Merlin is probably the only one who doesn’t say he’s his father’s spitting image. In fact -

“No, you’re way too pretty for him. Arthur looked like a troll, honestly.”

Llacheu laughs. “Like the troll Uther married?”

At that moment, Mother enters the room. She is in her nightgown but her hair is not yet braided. That’s always been Merlin’s job (even though she’s fully able to do it herself, it’s part of their evening tradition. Just another thing he doesn’t understand). 

“What’s this I hear about Queen Catrina?” she asks in a wry voice, sliding onto the end of his bed right beside Merlin. He flashes her a companionable smile, and she returns it. 

“Merlin was just telling me that my father looked like a troll!”

Mother playfully swats Merlin on the arm. “Now that’s just being rude. Queen Catrina didn’t look _that_ bad.”

The three of them howl out with laughter together. They laugh and laugh and laugh, until Mother and Merlin lock eyes and remember who they’re laughing about, and suddenly that suffocating presence that’s haunted him since birth - the presence of his father’s memory, stifling the air with transient misery - falls back over them like a heavy blanket.

For perhaps the millionth time, Mother brushes the cowlicked hair out of his face and sadly murmurs, “Your father would be _so_ proud of you, Llacheu.”

He is no longer comforted by the thought of his father, but smiles and lets her kiss him goodnight anyway (even though kisses are only for babies).

Llacheu finds that telling jokes and goofing off tends to make people smile. His mother, usually so serious and withdrawn, comes out of her shell when he messes around. So he starts telling jokes. All day, all the time, whenever he can. Mother likes wordplay, while his uncles much prefer more visual comedy, and Merlin likes anything vindictive and sarcastic. He studies and masters every form of humor he can get his hands on.

But it’s still not enough, somehow. No matter how funny or stupid he is, that damned trace of misery still lingers on all the clothes they wear and in all the soaps they bathe with. It permeates their flesh and hair and armor, until even the happiest moments are tinged with pain.

Someone hurt his family. Someone took away their ability to be truly happy, to be whole.

Llacheu is nine when he makes a pact with himself: when he finally meets the bastard who did this to his loved ones, he’s gonna break their nose.

The only problem with that is, the person in question is dead and also his biological father.

When Llacheu is ten, Merlin gets abducted. Llacheu’s friend, his family, his father, his whole _world_ \- goes missing in the middle of the night. And Llacheu must spend the next week in a frantic whirlwind as everyone scrambles to find him, and this is the first moment that Llacheu truly understands why everyone is so sad all the time. The way Llacheu feels about Merlin’s absence...well, if he had to feel that way all the time, he’d be pretty sad too.

No bedtime stories. No late-night trips out of the castle to ride on Aithusa’s back or learn magic or catch fireflies. No being chased out of the kitchen by a spoon-wielding head chef. No monthly pilgrimages to Gaius’s grave. No flinging peas at each other across the table at dinner, sometimes even roping Mother into it.

On day four, Llacheu comes into his mother’s room with a small tome, intending for her to give him his daily lessons since Merlin usually does but he’s not here right now. He finds Uncle Leon holding Mother in a tight side-hug, and he finds Mother sobbing loudly into his shoulder and her hair an unkempt mess.

“I can’t - I can’t _lose_ him, Leon,” she weeps. “Not him, not after Lancelot, Elyan, Gwaine, Gaius, _Arthur_ ...I can’t keep _losing_ people…”

“We’ll find him, Gwen,” Uncle Leon promises. There’s a desperate sheen in his eyes. “We _will_. We have to.”

“What if - what if I have to sit in this castle again, waiting for someone to come and tell me he’s dead? What if I never get to say g-goodbye _again_?”

Uncle Leon’s crying now. Lacheu has never seen him do that before. “This _won’t_ be a repeat of Arthur. You have my word. We’ll find Merlin, and he’ll be alright.”

Llacheu slinks away from the door and back down the hall. He doesn’t do his studying that day, and everyone is too busy being sad to notice.

Eventually, they find Merlin. They find him bound in magic-nullifying manacles, chained to the bottom of a well, emaciated and in bloody tatters but alive, somehow. Llacheu runs up to hug him tightly, but he just lets out a gasp of agony. Mother gently pulls him away and says Merlin’s been hurt badly and needs some space.

Merlin cracks open a bloodshot eye and weakly grasps Llacheu’s hand. His fingers are blistered and bony, and Llacheu almost hurls at how brittle they feel. “Wh-who needs -” He coughs. Blood trickles from his lip. “Who n-needs space when we h-have Llacheu?”

Mother doesn’t laugh, but she does try to smile (and fails horribly). In her defense, Merlin doesn’t laugh either.

Llacheu tries to laugh for the both of them.

He fails.

He always fails.

And he fails because he’s playing catch-up. Because everyone is still mourning his father, who Llacheu never even knew. Llacheu keeps scrambling to cheer them up, to make them forget that arrogant bastard called his father and make them pay attention to _him_ instead. But somehow, even now, he’s playing second-fiddle to a dead man. 

Llacheu’s childhood is haunted by a grief that he himself cannot partake in. Sometimes he wishes he could, just once, experience _true_ loss, so he could finally be let in on their little mourner's party.

On his thirteenth birthday, Camelot is in flames. 

Well, Merlin always did say to be careful what you wish for. 

Leon, Percival, Mother -

Oh, god, _Mother._

Merlin grabs Llacheu by the top of his head and pulls his face into his shoulder, which smells of smoke and rot, to hide him from the sight. But it’s not enough. He can no longer _see_ everything he’s ever known crumble into ash, but he knows it’s happening. He can hear the crackling flames. He can feel the heat on his back. He can _feel_ Merlin’s shoulders shake as he cries. He can smell the stench of decaying, burning flesh that wafts up from Merlin’s clothes, from the very air around them. 

And with a pang in his heart, he realizes that some of the flesh that’s burning is his mother’s.

He throws up all over Merlin’s back. Merlin himself is too traumatized to care.

Years pass. Merlin does not age, but Llacheu does. They find asylum in Nemeth, with Merlin becoming Queen Mithian’s First Advisor and Llacheu apprenticing under her Court Physician (the whole knight thing never really fit him well, anyway). Llacheu grows up, becomes close friends with the princess, Mithian's daughter Elaine, and spends most of his days envying her for having a mother.

Merlin laughs brighter and louder during these years. As Llacheu has become acutely aware of, he always acts the cheeriest when he’s at his saddest point. Some kind of attempt at covering his pain, probably. It fools everyone but Llacheu, because Llacheu does the same thing. 

They never talk about it. Camelot, that is. Merlin always offers, always says “I’m here when you need me,” but Llacheu knows that the conversation will make Merlin sadder than he already is. And Llacheu isn’t ready to face that - to make Merlin _sad,_ just like his father always does, because he is _not_ his father. Arthur makes Merlin sad, but Llacheu will make Merlin _happy_ , dammit.

It’s not a perfect arrangement. Merlin is still sad - even more so now, because he’s mourning more than just Arthur. And Llacheu, for all that he loves Merlin, is sad too. And when kids are sad, they often act out. 

Needless to say, it only takes a few months of Llacheu’s angsting and complaining for Merlin to develop a saint-like patience. 

When Llacheu is 70, Merlin still looks the age he did when Arthur died. For some reason, that makes Llacheu angry. But his bones are too old to throw his temper around without breaking, so he just simmers in silence while watching young-and-spry Merlin chase Elaine’s grandchildren around the courtyard.

A year later, Merlin packs his bags. He’s leaving, and has no intention of coming back.

“I can’t be here to see you die,” Merlin confesses. “I...I’ve watched so many others die. And considering I’m immortal, I’ll probably continue to do so for a long time. But…” He lets out a long sigh. Runs his hand through his hair. “You’re Arthur’s son, and I know that, but after all these years I can’t help feeling as though you’re my own.”

Llacheu is quick to say, “I _am_ your son, Merlin. In all the ways that matter, we’re family.”

“That we are.” His smile is fragile and tremulous. He turns his gaze away. “I’ve watched everyone I love, die. And what happened to Camelot nearly -”

“Merlin.”

He holds up his hands defensively. “I _know_ we don’t talk about it, but I just...the siege, watching all those people die...it nearly destroyed me. But looking after you is what kept me sane all these years. So long as I had you to take care of, I could...handle it.” A pause. “In a way, you’re sort of like Arthur. He kept me sane, too.”

Llacheu struggles not to throw up at the thought.

“Your mother’s death damn near broke me, and your father’s death was much the same.”

“Arthur’s death _did_ break you,” Llacheu grumbles, not even trying to hide his contempt.

“That it did,” Merlin admits. “But you, who I consider my own son? I would never recover from that. I can’t be around to see it. I don’t…” He turns away. “I’m so sorry, Llacheu.”

Llacheu calls Merlin a coward, maybe. He shouts a lot of things at Merlin’s retreating back that day, and ends up forgetting most of them.

In the end, Llacheu dies a month later. He dies full of regrets. He dies wishing Merlin could come to his bedside so he could _apologize_ for everything he’d said and done. He dies cursing his father. 

He dies alone.

* * *

Lochlan Perryworth’s first memory is of him sitting at the table, jumbo crayon set scattered all over the place and crayon wax scraped under his fingernails. His mom is putting away groceries, and she’s humming a tune he will later recognize as “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles. He hops off his chair and runs up to her.

“Mommy, Mommy! Look what I drew!” 

Even at a young age, Lochlan gets the sense that his mother doesn’t look quite right. Her hair is too red, her skin is too pale, her eyes aren’t misty and tearful enough. Her face is too _happy_. 

She eagerly bends over to inspect his drawing. “And what might this be, sweetheart?”

“It’s Merlin the magician! From the movie!” He points to the TV for emphasis. 

Mom chuckles. “But isn’t Merlin an old man with a big ol’ beard and a pointy hat?”

“Only when he wants to.”

“What about when he doesn’t want to?”

He gestures to the drawing. “Then he looks like this! He wears scarves a lot. Can I wear scarves too, Mommy?”

Ruffling his hair she says, “Sure, dear.”

They don’t end up buying him any scarves, but it’s okay because he’s already forgotten about it by dinnertime.

Lochlan’s second memory is of his step-dad Brian Coulson coming home from work and slamming the door behind him, grumbling something about traffic as he barks out for Lochlan to get him a beer. Mom expresses her disapproval of Brian’s attitude, and they get into a fight. Lochlan interrupts the argument with a joke he found in _1,001 Jokes To Tell Your Friends_ , in an attempt to lighten the mood, but Mom snippily orders him to go to his room. 

He spends the rest of the night under his bed, a pillow over his ears as he tries to block out the sounds of his parents’ yells. With a flashlight pinned under his chin he reads his jokebook and whispers the jokes aloud to himself. That night, he dreams of a clown waltzing into the house and making his parents laugh so hard that they forget about how much they hate each other.

He doesn’t always dream of clowns, though. Sometimes, he dreams of Merlin the magician. Not how he was in _Sword in the Stone_ , but as a young and bright-eyed guy with black hair and colorful clothes. He dreams that Merlin the magician taps his magic wand and makes his parents get along; he dreams that Merlin the magician shows up at his door to take him to Hogwarts; he dreams that Merlin the magician reveals he’s secretly been Lochlan’s real father this whole time and whisks him off to Camelot.

Sometimes he dreams that he has a loving family that is always sad, instead of angry like they are now. Sometimes he wonders which would be worse. 

In the end, he concludes that the former - the sadness - is worse. When everyone is at each other’s throats, at least you’re allowed to hate them. You can hit things and slam your bedroom door and scream for your father to rot in hell. And it doesn’t really matter, because he doesn’t like you that much anyway. He’ll just tell you to rot right along with him.

But when everyone is sad? They love you and they’re trying their best. They are doing everything they can to care about you and make you happy, but they just _can’t_ . Because something or some _one_ broke them. You _can’t_ get mad at them. You can’t scream and cry and shout. If you did, it would just break them even further.

He doesn’t know why, but Lochlan _really_ hates the name ‘Arthur’.

On his fifteenth birthday, he holds a sleepover birthday party and invites everyone in his friend group (a group which mostly just consists of the video game club, but whatever). While everyone else is telling his mom what pizza toppings they want, his friend Kyle asks to speak to him in private. Kyle confesses he has a crush on Lochlan and Lochlan confesses that he feels the same, and they kiss behind the bedroom door, with Lochlan’s Millenium Falcon LEGO model as their only witness.

It’s a pretty good birthday, over all. 

He and Kyle are a thing now, he guesses, but he doesn’t tell anyone about it. His parents would freak out if they knew he was dating a guy.

When he’s sixteen, his class goes on a field trip to a museum. They pass an medieval-looking portrait that is half-singed, recovered from the rubble of some old British castle. What remains of it is a man with stringy blonde hair and a strong jawline, stoic features sculpted into something not unlike one of those Roman statues. A large golden crown sits on his head. 

Lochlan can’t stare at it for too long without feeling a strong urge to set the painting on fire. 

“Check it out,” says Kyle, reading the inscription. “Historians believe this painting might be the strongest evidence we have to the existence of King Arthur. I mean, if _he_ was real then what other legends might be real too?”

Struggling not to sucker-punch that stupid painting in its stupid painted face, Lochlan forces a casual tone. “Sorry, Ky, but some doodle of an old dead guy isn’t evidence that Bigfoot’s real.”

Kyle rolls his eyes. “Smartass. But seriously though. It makes you wonder what kind of person he was.”

A snort. “Probably a massive dick. Now c’mon, Julie told me the gift shop sells slinkies.”

On the night before the SAT, Kyle breaks up with him. Says he’s fed up with Lochlan’s facetious attitude and that Lochlan’s endless humor does _not_ , in fact, make him feel better about his sister’s failing chemotherapy. Shocker.

Lochlan calls him a coward, maybe. They both say a lot of angry, hurtful things that night and it’s hard to keep track of who screamed what.

He passes the SAT at fourth in the class. He grins vindictively at Kyle, who got a much lower score than him, because if he acts like anything less than a raging dick then he’ll start sobbing uncontrollably. And if Lochlan knows one thing about himself, it’s that he refuses to cry (much less _sob_ ). He sees enough crying in his dreams to last him a lifetime, thanks.

That night, he doesn’t dream of crying faces. He dreams of a man wearing a colorful scarf and a bag over his shoulder, saying “I can’t just stay here and watch you die.” He dreams of the man walking away, head bowed low and shoulders trembling. He dreams of shouting all manner of horrible things at this man, but not a single slur causes the man to turn around and _face him_. 

He wakes up in the middle of the night. All his pillows have been tossed onto the floor. He puts them back on his bed, but does not go back to sleep.

When he’s 18, Lochlan attends Pride for the first time. He warily places a rainbow pin on his shirt and waves a matching rainbow flag around. He sees Kyle across the street, but they mutually ignore each other. He has a good time, for the most part - and then he hears a familiar laugh.

A sense of urgency fills him like oxygen. Legs pumping, he follows the sound, worming his way through droves of colorfully dressed, cheering people. Eventually there’s a clearing. A tall, dark-skinned man is smiling and taking a photo of two equally dark-skinned kids - his children, presumably, and they look to be roughly Lochlan’s age. 

The one on the right is short and muscular, with wide eyes and short hair, with a rainbow painted on each cheek and his arm wrapped around the shoulder of someone who looks to be his sister. She has - 

**_Soft brown eyes, crinkled with warmth and compassion but also darkened by a heavy sadness._ **

\- happy, unburdened eyes as dark and warm as Lochlan’s own, and -

**_Long curly hair, which Merlin always braids right before she goes to bed while reverently kissing her hand and saying “Sleep well, my lady” and both of them look so damn sad when together but even sadder once they’ve parted ways for the night._ **

\- and _short_ hair, cut into an undercut and springing lightly on her shoulder as the mass of it parts to the side, and a tank top striped with the trans pride colors, and a cute pink skirt and a bi flag pinned between her fingers like a cigarette, and a soft smile on her face -

**_He tries and tries so hard to make her smile, and he succeeds, but it’s never bright, it’s never unburdened, there’s always a trace of Arthur Arthur Arthur -_ **

\- without even the slightest hint of sadness.

Every muscle in his body screams at him to run up and hug her and cry out, “Mother!” while he holds her tight and protects her from any lingering fires.

He doesn’t do that, because that would be weird as hell, but he does offer to take the photo so the dad can pose with his kids. The dad excitedly puts himself between his children, pulling them both close to him. All of them laugh to the point of crying - but the tears are _happy_ , and the concept of _happy_ tears is so foreign to him that he almost forgets to take the picture.

The boy introduces himself as Ethan Smith, and his sister as Gwen. They go to his school - in his grade, even - but it’s such a big school that he never even realized it. They just hang around different crowds, he supposes. 

They become friends after that. Ethan becomes like a big brother to him, and Gwen a sister. Ethan goes to nursing school that fall. Gwen and Lochlan aren’t quite as solid in their post-graduation plans, but Gwen eventually decides on environmentalism and Lochlan takes a gap year. 

His gap year is spent taking on more hours at Taco Bell. His goal is to earn enough money to attend whichever college happens to be the farthest from his parents and will actually accept him. Gwen says she’ll miss him but that she understands.

Hearing her words wobble as she says that makes him want to hurl. He doesn’t, though. He just pulls out his phone and shows her the first meme he can find, whether or not it’s actually funny. 

An acceptance letter comes in the mail from Penn State, but right now they’re holding a party to celebrate Gwen’s name getting legally changed, so he holds off the news for later. He wouldn’t want to make everyone sad with the idea of him moving away.

In the end, the idea of making Gwen and Ethan sad is too much to bear. He says goodbye in the form of a letter taped to the Smith family’s mailbox. His drive to Pennsylvania is flooded with seventeen voicemail alerts and over 50 unread texts. He can’t bring himself to see their worried, heartbroken messages, so he just hides the phone in an old shoebox and buys a TracFone from the nearest Target.

**_Everyone is always crying, crying, crying, and he keeps trying to make them smile but it’s never enough._ ** **He’s** **_never enough._ **

Every once in a while he checks Gwen’s Instagram, because apparently he’s a masochist. She made a post telling Lochlan to, if he sees this, be safe wherever he is and know that they will always be his friends no matter what. Lochlan clenches his fists so hard that it leaves red marks on his palms.

Three months after the move and two weeks after the semester begins, Lochlan checks her Instagram again. She’s got a boyfriend now. And his name is -

Arthur.

_Arthur._

**_Arthur_ **.

He throws his phone at the wall. He’s not sure why her boyfriend’s stupid chiseled face and stupid blonde hair and stupid _happy, happy_ blue eyes make him angry, but it _does_. 

The screen cracks on impact. A week passes before he buys a replacement. The landlord grills him about the dent it left in the wall, says the repair fee will have to come out of his pocket.

The next few months pass in an absolute whirlwind of chaos. A wizard - a _familiar_ wizard with _familiar_ sad blue eyes (sadder than they’d ever been in his dreams) - comes to his door and tells him he’s the reincarnation of King Arthur’s son. Tells him that his past life’s name was Llacheu Pendragon, which is so familiar that it _burns_. 

With Lochlan’s permission, Merlin the magician places two hands on his face and breathes a lifetime of memories into his mind. 

Mother. Uncle Percival and Uncle Leon. Gaius’s funeral. Firefly-catching. A siege that burned the city down. Nemeth. Princess Elaine. Dying old and alone.

At Merlin’s insistence, Lochlan agrees to drive back to Oregon and see his past life’s parents - to meet his _father_ . Getting there is a bit of an issue, though. Merlin doesn’t have a car because he just teleports everywhere, and Lochlan flat-out refuses to _teleport_ anywhere (he’s read Harry Potter, and has ever since been deathly afraid of splinching). So they drive across America in his old PT Cruiser - a half rust, half leather hand-me-down of a hand-me-down with an Elvis Presley bobblehead that he keeps around purely because he knows his step-dad _Brian_ would hate it (and if he’s lucky, Arthur too). 

The ride is several days long, but only partly uncomfortable. There are long stretches of silence overwhelmed with all the things they refuse to talk about. Lochlan’s mind is blinded by thoughts of a burning city, and given the wetness in Merlin’s eyes then he’s probably thinking about much the same. 

Every chance he gets, every time there’s a lull in the conversation, Merlin apologizes. He apologizes for abandoning Lochlan - Llacheu - when he needed him most. Lochlan insists it’s nothing. Laughs it off. Makes a joke about it. Does anything, anything at all, to make Merlin stop apologizing. To make him stop looking at him with those sad, _miserable_ eyes because the mere thought of making Merlin feel like that makes him want to claw his own face off.

It almost hurts worse, the fact that Merlin doesn’t see through him like he used to. Although it _was_ 1500 years ago for Merlin, so he’s bound to forget a few things here and there - 

But it’s just not _fair_ , dammit, that Merlin should still remember what Arthur’s favorite color was but can’t even recognize when Lochlan is trying to hide his pain.

It’s not all bad, though. They talk a lot. They laugh. They catch up on old times. They make fun of Uncle Percival, wherever his reincarnation may be, behind his back. Lochlan puts Lemon Demon on blast for two hours straight. Merlin makes jokes about all the historical events he’s witnessed, and Lochlan starts to get the feeling that he’s looking right at the person he inherited his sense of humor (and adjacent coping mechanisms) from. 

Forget Arthur Pendragon. Forget Brian Coulson. Forget about ancient paintings and drunken fights at 2AM, forget “your father would be so proud” and forget “your step-dad loves you, he just has a temper”. Forget being an orphan, forget being disowned. This guy, this skinny scarf-wearing immortal twink, is his _real_ dad. 

* * *

Arthur Drake was stunned, to say the least, when Gwen and Merlin came told him that he had a son in his past life. A son who was reincarnated alongside the rest of them. 

His name used to be Llacheu but now he goes by Lochlan. He and Gwen are high school friends in this new life, sort of, and isn’t _that_ a separate head trip all on its own. Y’know, the fact that everyone got reincarnated on the exact same day so they are likewise all the same age. 

(He and Morgana are twins in this life - she’s a natural blonde but dyes it black, much to Arthur’s amusement - and the same is true for Gwen and Elyan. Hell, even _Gaius_ and _Uther_ are the same age as the rest of them.

Yeah. Uther. Also known as Ulysses Drake, also known as Arthur’s second cousin, also known as QAnon in human form. Complicated emotions about _that_ aside, his next family reunion is definitely gonna be a weird one.)

“He looks so much like his father,” she says, supportively stroking his hand with a deft thumb. She gazes at him as if he hung the stars, and she’s been doing so since they both regained their memories. Merlin does much the same. But in their defense, they _did_ spend several years - millenia, in Merlin’s case - mourning his death. They’re allowed to be a little starstruck. He certainly doesn’t mind the attention, at any rate. And if it's any consolation, they look at Elyan, Gwaine, and Lancelot with the same expression.

Arthur supposes she says that to comfort him, but it doesn’t quite work as intended. People used to say the same thing about him and Uther.

The front door unlocks. Merlin comes in first, a shaky grin on his face as he stands in the doorway - a deliberate stopgap between them and the person standing behind him. 

“Hey Gwen,” he greets. His voice is weary but injected with a false cheer. “Hey prat.”

Gwen waves at him. “Hi there, Merlin. Did you have a safe drive?”

“Yep! Did you have a safe...sitting on the couch?”

She chuckles, just as falsely cheerful as Merlin. This is, as Arthur has come to discover, a practiced routine for them - suffer unimagineable horrors, smile and pretend it never happened, rinse, repeat. “Never felt safer.”

A long pause passes. None of them are quite willing to move just yet. Moving means confrontation. Confrontation means meeting their son. _His_ son.

Oh god, he is way too young to be a dad - especially with a kid who is inexplicably Arthur’s same age. He’s not ready for this. So, _so_ not ready for this. He’s gonna screw up so bad it’s not even funny. 

Merlin eventually does step to the side, with a hesitant, “Well, uh, Gwen, Arthur. I’d like you to meet...Lochlan Perryworth! Alternatively known as Llacheu Pendragon.”

Llacheu or Lochlan or whatever his name is, as it turns out, looks _nothing_ like Arthur. He’s tall, for starters. Not quite Percival tall, but Arthur still has to crane his neck upward to see his son’s - his _son’s_ \- Guinevere-brown eyes. And he’s lanky like Merlin. And his hair is wavy like Leon’s, and he has Elyan’s cheekbones and Gwen’s complexion and Gwaine’s sense of humor.

Lochlan is shaky on his feet when he sees Gwen, and her knees nearly give out at the sight of him. Which makes sense - they may have been friends in high school, but that was before they had their Camelot memories. 

“M-Mother,” Lochlan whispers, sounding so young and yet so much like Lancelot. “Y-you’re really...you…”

“Oh, _sweetheart_!” Gwen’s face streaks with tears as she runs forward and grapples him into an embrace. Like she’d been stranded in a desert all her life, but is seeing water for the first time in years. She drinks in his presence in all the ways you’d expect of a mother upon seeing her long-lost son after literal centuries apart. 

Merlin stands to the side, absolutely glowing as he watches their reunion. It’s the happiest Arthur has seen him since this whole reincarnation thing happened, but even now there’s a lingering grief that’s stuck to Merlin like gum on the bottom of his shoe. He tries to convince himself that it’s not his fault for dying, for making Merlin so miserable, that Merlin was already immortal and would’ve wound up this messed up anyway - but if there’s one thing Pendragons are good at, it’s hating themselves.

For a moment Arthur wonders if Lochlan inherited the ever iconic Pendragon self-loathing, but then shoves the thought out of his mind. He needs to hope for the best for his son, not contemplate on all the ways he might be broken. 

Damn, that feels so weird to say. His _son_ . He has a _son_.

Five minutes pass before the two of them finally extricate their limbs apart, and Gwen’s eyes are _shining_ as she gestures to Arthur. “Lochlan, I have someone I’d like you to meet. Your _father_.”

Arthur gives a stilted wave and puts on his dadliest voice. “Hello, son.” That sounds like something a dad would say, right?

Lochlan’s eyes narrow dangerously, skeptically, almost _angrily_ \- but before Arthur can wonder what he did wrong, Lochlan’s face flattens out into a much more neutral (forced) smile. “Hey there, _Dad_.” He stretches out his hand. Arthur shakes it. Both of them are squeezing too hard, he’s pretty sure.

By the end of the night, Arthur is _certain_ that his son hates him.

Which is just as well, because Arthur’s pretty sure he hates his son too.

* * *

Lochlan and Arthur have a frosty relationship, and Lochlan refuses to take the blame for that. When Merlin and Gwen ask about it, he just spits out some half-true BS about how it’s awkward for him to be interacting with a guy who was not only his father in a past life, but also someone he never even _met_. 

But for all that they butt heads, they’re at least on the same page about keeping their distance. Lochlan made it very clear on day one that he’d like to interact with Arthur as little as possible, and Arthur seemed almost relieved by this. Which, uh, dick move, but Lochlan is no stranger to dickish fathers. It’s almost pleasant how familiar this is, the rhythm of it all - memorizing your father’s schedule so you can avoid him like the plague, making as little noise as possible so he never has to realize you exist, shooting back his every mistake with a passive aggressive quip, keeping all your muscles clenched when you can’t avoid him so you’re _ready_ for any fights that might break out. 

“So what do you think?” Merlin asks. They’re at the mall, eating pretzels and drinking slushies. It’s been nice so far, having a bit of leisure with Merlin - leisure that his survivalist Dark Ages past life would never have allowed time for. 

Lochlan pretends he doesn’t know exactly what - _who_ \- Merlin is referring to. “It’s a pretty good mall. I mean, I think I saw some kid pissing in the water fountain, but that’s just a standard American experience at this point -”

“You know what I meant, Cheu,” says Merlin. 

It’s the nickname that does it. He sighs and shrugs, takes a bite out of his pretzel. Maybe talking with his mouth full with take the edge off what he’s about to say (because he sure can’t _lie_. Merlin may have forgotten a lot of things, but he unfortunately didn’t forget Lochlan’s tells). “I dunno what you want me to say, Merlin. He’s a prick. Once you’ve met one asshole father, you’ve met them all.”

Merlin snorts. He’s always been a lot more good-natured about Lochlan’s anti-Arthur opinions than Gwen. “He can certainly seem that way.”

“He doesn’t just _seem_ that way,” Lochlan groans. “He _is_ that way! I mean for starters, his sense of style is a crime against humanity. I’m pretty sure his khakis alone break at least four Geneva Conventions.”

Merlin gives a solemn nod. “Seven, actually.”

“And don’t get me _started_ on all the bigotry.”

“Well, two lifetimes of internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity is one hell of a cocktail. Not to mention being rich. As in Camelot, so it shall be in America. At least now I don’t have to put up with his closeted pansexual angst, though, so that’s a plus.” A pause, then a devious grin. “Or should I say, his _pan_ -ic?”

Lochlan shakes his head. “Don’t. He doesn’t deserve such a good pun.”

Merlin laughs, tosses his head back and _laughs_ , and for a moment everything is _great_ . Lochlan _did it_. The fabled moment of pure, serene, unbidden happiness he had always chased after, always dreamed of putting onto Merlin’s face, is finally here.

But then he looks closer.

And there, in the ageless crinkles around his eyes and in the set of his jaw, are vestiges of sadness. Vestiges of his past, and his pain, and all the misery he’s been made to receive. Vestiges of, dare he say it, Arthur.

_Dammit_.

Lochlan doesn’t express his frustrations aloud, doesn’t give them voice. Merlin doesn’t deserve that. It’s not his fault he’s traumatized. Not his fault that _Arthur broke him._

And that’s exactly what Arthur did, isn’t it? All those years where Merlin had to hide his magic out of _fear_ of Arthur, initially rejecting Merlin and only accepting his magic while on his _deathbed_. All those years of thrown goblets and harsh words and bullying - but if Lochlan tries to point it out, tries to mention the fact that Arthur is a massive asshole, Merlin will rush to his defense.

He and Gwen are like that. Always have been. So deeply indoctrinated into the Church of Arthur that they’ve bought into his press. Distance really does make the heart grow fonder, he supposes - because that’s the only thing that could explain why Merlin cares so deeply for someone who’s treated him so horribly in the past.

* * *

Winter break lasts for a month at Penn State, and at Merlin and Gwen’s insistence he has agreed to spend it in Oregon. Lochlan stays at Merlin’s apartment, and feels bad for taking the bed despite Merlin’s claims that he doesn’t even need to sleep in the first place. 

It feels like the good old days. It feels like the days they spent after the siege that destroyed Camelot, with the both of them having been taken in by druids and being forced to share a cramped tent. It feels like the first weeks they spent in Nemeth, still adjusting to new quarters that aren’t quite home and never fully will be. It feels like unpacking a single box of model spaceships and a single duffle-bag of clothes in a mostly empty dormitory bedroom.

Merlin’s room is cluttered wall to wall with various tchotchkes he’s collected over the years, and the shelf over his headboard is brimming with framed photos and portraits, all of people he’s met and loved over the years. 

The family painting of Gwen and a six-year-old Llacheu, magically shrunken to fit in a pocket, remains face-down. Lochlan makes no effort to change that. The artist had painted Arthur to be standing beside Gwen despite being long dead by then, as per Gwen’s request. Merlin and Lochlan both find the sight of it to be painful, albeit for wildly different reasons.

Lochlan spends the month getting to know his family. Everyone in the Round Table except Uncle Leon and Uncle Percival have been found and had their past memories restored. Lochlan and Gwaine get along pretty damn well, much to Elyan’s - formerly _Ethan’s_ \- bewilderment, and Lancelot reminds him so much of Elaine that it almost hurts to think about. Gwaine and Lochlan, despite the different skin tones, look almost identical from behind, and use this fact to mess with everyone as much as possible. Lancelot hosts a movie night at his place as often as everyone’s schedules will allow. They usually end up watching either _The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ , or _Spaceballs_ \- although one time Gwaine did successfully coerce them all into a _Mystery Incorporated_ marathon.

Gwen is also on vacation, but the local community college’s winter break only lasts two weeks so they don’t end up spending as much time together as Lochlan had hoped. But that’s okay, because what few days they do spend as just the two of them make everything worth it. He and Gwen had already been close, but this extra dimension to their relationship is both endearing and awkward.

Endearing, because it’s so unbelievably wonderful to see his mother again when his last memory of her is her brutal death. Awkward, because he and his mother were both reincarnated on the same day and are therefore the exact same age (and she’s not exactly his mother anymore either). They’ve agreed not to use labels like ‘mom’ and ‘son’ when referring to each other, choosing to redefine what their relationship is _now_ instead of clinging to what it once was. 

Nevertheless, every few days they go out together - movie theaters, hiking trails, even a zipline park once - and spend the whole day as just the two of them. They do not reminisce on the past, they do not talk about Camelot. They’re not here for that. Here, they are two friends who are exploring the new, weird bounds of their dynamic.

She only breaks their moratorium on Camelot Talk once. It’s on the drive back from the butterfly conservatory, and it’s late, and it’s Gwen’s turn with the aux cord so that means they have to spend the night listening to obscure internet music. 

Right now, a Vocaloid song is quietly rumbling from the speakers. Gwen sings along under her breath, the Japanese rolling off her tongue with practiced ease. Lochlan makes a mental note to learn Japanese too, because he _really_ wants to know what the hell “ _me ga tsubureta minashiko to_ ” means and why she sounds so emotional when she sings it. 

He glances at the radio, waits for the song’s title to cycle through the neon readout. _Hito wa Obake ni Naru_ , it reads. 

“So,” he asks, piercing the silence. “What’s ‘Hito wa’-whatever supposed to mean, anyway?”

Her head is rested against the window, tired eyes following the raindrops splattering against it. She yawns. After a moment of hesitation, she says, “It means...‘People Become Ghosts’.”

“Oh.” 

He’s not sure he wants to know what that lyric means anymore, nor why it made her so emotional. He can probably guess. 

The song reaches its final notes, and a new one comes on. Gwen doesn’t sing along to this one, though. She instead turns to Lochlan, eyes heavy with intent. “Lochlan,” she says. 

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

She steamrolls past his attempt to lighten the mood. “Lochlan, what... _happened_...after I died?”

He shrugs with false ease. “Eh. Merlin and I did a bit of sight-seeing, became traveling bards, died of food poisoning, the whole nine yards. Think _Coco_ , but in pre-Crusades Britain instead of Mexico. You really didn’t miss much, Gwen.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Ah, seriousness, my one weakness.”

She groans. “Goodness, you’re even more facetious than Gwaine.” She turns off the radio mid-lyric. “Please just answer this one thing, Llach- _Lochlan_ , and then I’ll never bother you about it again.”

Lochlan keeps his gaze firmly on the road ahead, the dark and stormy road ahead, because if he looks at the sad, sad, _sad_ look inevitably staining his former mother’s face then he’ll have an emotional breakdown. Which, for starters, isn’t exactly a safe driving practice. 

“We stayed there for a few hours,” Lochlan says eventually. His voice is rough. He makes no effort to clear his throat because if he stops even briefly, he’ll never find the strength to start back up again. “You know. Near Camelot.”

Her eyes are wide and wet. Her lower lip is quivering. Her hands are shaking. He doesn’t have to look at her to know this. 

“Merlin put my face in his shoulder,” Lochlan continues. “To keep me from looking, I think. I could smell it though. He couldn’t keep me from smelling it. The...the bodies, that is.”

A white SUV changes lanes in front of them, doesn’t use its blinker. It takes all the effort in his body not to change the subject by making a joke about it.

“We stayed with the druids for a bit. Then Mithian took us in. I became the apprentice to her Court Physician, and later befriended her daughter Elaine. Merlin became the First Advisor, but no amount of fancy clothes could get him to stop wearing his scarves. I tried learning magic from him, but turns out I’m hopeless at it. I was good with medicine, though, so that’s a thing I guess. I died of old age, Merlin obviously didn’t. I never had kids or got married, but that’s fine by me.”

“But you were…” Her voice is wet. “...happy? You were happy, right?”

The stoplight is red. The windshield wipers are loud as they drag along wet glass. Raindrops blur his view of the tail-lights in front of him. The car is cold, because its heaters have been broken since forever and he never bothered to get them fixed. The Elvis bobblehead sways from its place on the dashboard.

“Yeah. Yeah, we were.” 

Gwen doesn’t confront him on the obvious lie. She just takes a deep breath, sniffles, wipes her eyes, and presses play again. Vocaloid music fills the car once more. This time the song is in English, but she doesn’t sing along. 

_“I’m afraid of flowers wilting away,”_ comes the Vocaloid’s stilted, robotic words. Damn, is Vocaloid the only thing Gwen has in her playlist? _“When I don’t get to say goodbye. And maybe there’s a chance that I could save them one more time.”_

The light turns green. Lochlan pulls the car through the intersection. A pharmacy passes them on their left.

_“But I’m a liar, lyin’ to me. I’m a liar, lyin’ to me. Oh, I’m alone.”_

Gwen is crying, and he can _hear_ her cry, but he’s too much of a coward to comfort her. So he keeps driving. Pretends he doesn’t notice. That’s how it’s always been, between him and his mother - she cries, they both pretend she didn’t, they both pretend he didn’t see her. As in Camelot, so it shall be in America.

_“I’m afraid of reaping what I sow, for showing any sort of fear,”_ the radio mechanically sings. _“But if I don’t communicate, I’ll drown myself in tears. Cuz I’m a liar, lyin' to me. Lyin' to -”_

He shuts off the radio. 

* * *

Back in the time of Camelot, Merlin had a hard time talking about what happened before Llacheu was born. He’d talk about goblins and trolls and funny pranks for hours. But the moment he got asked why Aithusa was the last of her kind, or who ‘Morgana’ was, or how Gwaine died, he clammed up. 

“You shouldn’t have to think about stuff like that,” Merlin would always say. “It’ll only make you sad.”

It was only during an especially heated argument when Llacheu was fourteen and frustrated by watching Mithian dote on Elaine that the matter finally came to a head. 

“You keep trying to shield me from pain! As if I don’t already know what that is!”

“And I’m trying to protect you from suffering even _more_ than you already have!” Merlin had cried. 

Ever Merlin’s son, Llacheu had known all the best ways to use his words. On a good day, they were effective for comedy and comfort. On a bad day, they were weapons poised to strike.

“Who are you really protecting here?” Llacheu hissed. “Me, or _yourself_?”

Merlin went quiet after that. Very, very quiet. 

When Merlin opened his mouth again, at long last Llacheu finally learned. He learned the story from its very beginning - destiny, the Purge, the Great Dragon, Morgana, the Veil, Mordred, Camlann - to its bitter end. 

Merlin had been right, as it turned out. Listening to all the ways his family had suffered before their fiery deaths only made the pain of losing them even worse. 

None of them had ever had the chance to be truly happy. They’d been doomed from the start.

And whose fault was that? Wasn’t the prophecized _Once and Future King_ supposed to save them? Wasn’t he supposed to legalize magic and bring about a golden age of Albion? If Arthur had just done his job, maybe Llacheu wouldn’t have discovered what burning flesh smells like.

But no. He needed _Merlin_ to teach him to not be a bigoted asshole instead of thinking for himself, and even then Merlin was almost too late. He needed _Merlin_ to swoop in and save him every other week, because he’d earned more enemies than he even knew about. He needed _Merlin_ and _Gwen_ to teach him how to be a half-decent human being instead of just a rich douchebag, but despite their efforts he still died a prick.

_“All your magic and you still can’t save my life.”_ Seriously, what kind of asshole says that? 

Everything that Arthur had - all his potential, all the effort, all the lessons in morality, all the love and comfort they poured into him - went to waste. And it left Merlin and Gwen and Leon and Percival in shambles, depressed shadows of their former selves. Unable to form a full smile, or laugh above a certain volume, or shake the general air of misery. They were broken. Broken, shattered people who still put in all the strength they had to smile - no matter how forced those smiles ended up being. They pulled themselves out of bed every day, and they wept in secret at night, all for Llacheu. All so he could live the happiest life they could possibly provide him.

Cheering them up was the least he could to return the favor, really. But even then he wasn’t entirely successful. Arthur had broken them far too much for Llacheu’s best efforts to repair. 

1500 years later, and he’s still cleaning up _Arthur’s_ messes.

Today’s mess: Morgana.

Merlin claims that she’s his fault. If he had helped her with her fear, if he’d told her about his magic then she might not have fallen to villainy. 

Lochlan’s gonna have to call bullshit on that. 

In his opinion, her lust for power didn’t come from fear. It came from ego, an ego and a sense of self-importance that had been there long before she discovered her magic. And perhaps it’s true that if she had gotten a proper support system, she could’ve overcome that fatal flaw and grown into a better person - that’s how growth works, after all. If she hadn’t been isolated and shoved into Morgause’s arms, those darker parts of herself might not have been cultivated into cruelty.

But that doesn’t change her agency in her own decisions. 

The group has had many heated debates about whether or not to restore Morgana’s memories of her past life. This goes around for quite a while, until Arthur sends a text in their group chat at three in the morning. Lochlan almost doesn’t read it, until he realizes it’s about Morgana.

_Arthur: Wait. If anyone should have the right to decide who Morgana becomes, shouldn’t it be Morgana herself? We can tell her about her past life without giving her memories back. We warn her about the risks, and about what she used to be like. If she wants her memories, then we give them to her. If not, then we don’t._

And so, three days later, they invite Morgana to a group meeting and lay everything out on the table for her.

It’s not the first time Lochlan has heard the tragedy in full, but it’s admittedly interesting to hear sides of the story besides Merlin’s. Gwaine’s agonized death. Elyan’s hours of torture. Percival’s dead family. Lancelot and Gwen’s harrowing tales of being magically compelled to have an affair, despite neither of them wanting it - which makes Lochlan’s sexual assault detector go _off_ , or maybe he’s just that disturbed by the idea of his friends being forced to kiss each other against their will.

Morgana hears it all, processes the information she’s received, and makes her decision.

“Yes,” she says. “I want - no, I _need_ to know. I need to know what I did.”

Merlin gives her the same spiel he gave the rest of them - “This is a big, life-changing decision. If I restore your past life, _nothing_ will ever be the same. I won’t give you your memories back until you’ve thought it over for at least three days. Come back to me after that and if you haven’t changed your mind, only then will I help you remember.”

She doesn’t change her mind. It’s Friday, and she is still as determined to remember as she had been on Tuesday. 

And it goes wrong. So, so horribly wrong.

The Morgana of the 21st century hasn’t exactly been a peach to hang around - where Lochlan uses humor to cope, Morgana uses violence - but she also isn’t as substantially messed up as her medieval counterpart had been. Her parents aren’t dead, her biological father isn’t an abusive piece of shit, and she grew up in a time where being lesbian isn’t as deadly as being a sorcerer had once been in the past, so all in all the new life has been a definite upgrade. She’s still a walking “not like other girls” meme, but she and Lochlan share a bizarre camaraderie. They get along. They are, dare he say it, friends. And he certainly likes her a hell of a lot more than _Arthur_. 

It’s almost painful, then, to see her past life’s memories twist her so obscenely. 

Morgana Drake uses violence to cope for feelings of helplessness that had been endemic to a childhood fraught with illness. It’s annoying, especially since her tendency to raise her voice only reminds Lochlan of his parents’ arguments, but he gets it. He understands her perceived helplessness, he understand what it’s like to feel as though you’re treading water and that nothing you ever do will be good enough to protect the ones you love or even yourself. He understands how violence might make you feel like you’re finally in control of your own life.

Morgana _Pendragon_ , on the other hand, uses violence as a weapon against all who dare to stand in the way of her aspirations for power. She knows what she wants and she knows how to get it, and she doesn’t care about who she hurts in the process. Morgana Pendragon is a woman who has become so jaded and angry that violence is her only outlet against a world she has decided is out to get her. Morgana Pendragon is paranoid and volatile, and has all the self-righteousness of an especially bloodthirsty bible-thumper. 

“I’m not going to kill her,” Merlin says. “I did it once, and I refuse to do so again. If we can give her the chance to redeem herself, then we have to take it.”

Lancelot is usually Merlin’s number-one supporter, but this time he disagrees. He remembers what it felt like to be a Shade, to be violated on such a horrific level, and has been petrified into near non-verbality ever since Morgana’s past life was restored. Gwaine is much the same, and Elyan for that matter. Lochlan can’t say he blames them, considering the terrible things she did to them. 

Leon - who was found and restored just a month ago - remembers what Morgana was like when she was still good, in both lifetimes, and champions for giving her a second chance. 

Before Gwen can declare her vote, the house explodes. 

A few days from now, the investigators will find several pieces of evidence pointing to the culprit being Morgana Drake. But at the moment, all Lochlan can think about is _blood_ and _fire_ and dammit all his life is going up in smoke _again_ and he can’t can’t can’t -

Elyan, Lancelot, and Leon all have serious, almost fatal injuries, but have since stabilized. They’re all in separate hospital rooms and sleeping off the immense cocktail of painkillers they were hopped up on. 

Gwaine refused painkillers - something about a history of substance abuse and a refusal to fall off the wagon again - but is in just as much pain as the rest of them. He passed out from sheer agony about an hour ago, but the doctors say he should make a full recovery in time. 

Gwen is still in surgery. Apparently it takes more than three hours to extricate a twisted steel beam from someone’s gut. 

Lochlan walks away unscathed, save fourteen stitches in his upper arm. Arthur walks away with a scrape on his forehead and a sprained ankle. Of _course_ Arthur got off with the lightest out out of everyone.

“What about Merlin?” Arthur asks. “There was another man with us, where _is_ he?”

The leader of the rescue team shakes her head. “We’re still searching the rubble, but haven’t found anyone else yet. We’ll let you know the moment we find him.” 

As she walks away, pale hijab swaying with every brisk step, Arthur collapses onto the stiff metal chair next to Lochlan. His head falls into his hands. 

Lochlan scoffs, rolls his eyes. “I _told_ you, Arthur. If you would just stop listening to yourself _talk_ , you’d have _heard_ me when I said that Merlin is immortal, but his regenerative abilities aren’t instant. Damage this severe, it’ll take a few days for him to piece himself back together.”

“How can you say that so certainly?” Arthur cries. He’s back on his feet again, pacing as he throws his hands in the air. “Maybe Morgana kidnapped him! They haven’t found his body, any number of things could’ve -”

“I did,” Lochlan says. He injects as much harshness into his tone as he can, but it’s not enough to hide the Scared Little Boy Voice wrapped around his throat like chains. 

Arthur falters. “What?”

“I said I _did_ see his body, asshat. I saw a few bone fragments. An eyeball. Some brain matter. Pieces of skin. All bunched up in his scarf. I saw it as the EMTs carried me off.”

“...Oh.” He sits back down again. He looks dangerously close to vomiting. “ _Oh god._ ”

Lochlan focuses on the TV. They’re playing a d-com rerun - _Lab Rats,_ he thinks, but his vision is too misty to tell for sure. He shuts out any thought of Merlin in tatters, Gwen on her deathbed, his friends all so close to following suit. He shuts out thought of Morgana, of who she used to be and who she’s become. 

Despite himself, Lochlan smirks vindictively at the sound of Arthur puking in the trashbin.

“What are _you_ smiling about?” Arthur snaps. He wipes the corner of his mouth on his sleeve. 

Lochlan shrugs. He really doesn’t have the energy to interact with Arthur right now, so he just keeps all his attention on the small waiting room TV. 

Arthur, the asshole, stands in his way. “No, really, _Lochlan_ . By all means, share with the class. What’s so great about this situation that you can find a reason to _smile_?”

“Well, you know what they say. The power of positive thinking and all that. Best way to get through a tough time is to just think happy thoughts.” Lochlan gets out of his chair, flipping Arthur off as he heads for the other end of the room. The waiting room is equipped with a small kitchenette, which Lochlan has been using to make himself many, many pots of black coffee. 

“Glad to hear you’re so easily placated,” Arthur huffs. “Meanwhile, our friends lie _dying_ , and here you are -”

Lochlan swiftly pivots around, jabs an accusing finger in Arthur’s direction. “No. Here _you_ are, picking on _me_ when this is all your fault!”

“Me? How is this _my_ fault?!”

“It was your idea to let Morgana decide! We gave her her memories back on _your_ command. Well congrats, your majesty. She got her memories back. And she took all my friends with her.”

Arthur is probably crossing his arms over his chest in disapproval, but Lochlan has his back turned again. Just pour the lukewarm coffee into the mug, stir the mug, sip. Don’t look at him. Don’t think about shouting and parents and the sound of frying pans being thrown against the wall. Don’t think about reading jokebooks under the bed. 

“In case you’ve forgotten, they’re _my_ friends too.”

“For reasons I fail to understand,” Lochlan grumbles under his breath, and gingerly pulls the rim of the cup to his lips.

An incredulous, furious breath huffs out of Arthur’s mouth like fire from a dragon. “Okay, y’know what? That’s it. I have just about had it up to _here_ with your _attitude._ What is your _problem_?”

“My problem?” Lochlan sets his cup onto the counter, lest it shatter in his increasingly clenched fist. “ _You’re_ my problem. Now buzz off and find someone else’s life to ruin, dickface. You’re blocking my view of the TV.”

This is the part where Arthur escalates. Where he gets sparked by the insult and harsh tone, and blows his top. This is the part where Lochlan raises his voice right back, maybe throws the coffee mug. This is the part where Arthur punches the TV and shouts, **_“Look what you made me do, you stupid child! Now I’m gonna need a new TV, and the money’s gonna come out of_ ** **your** **_ungrateful ass.”_ ** This is the part where Lochlan kicks Arthur in the shins and runs up to his room, slamming his door as loud as he can while screaming **_“If you want a goddamn TV then why don’t you get off the couch and buy one yourself, you_ ** **shitstain** **_!”_ **

But Arthur doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t kick and scream and shout. He just stands there with a troubled, slightly hurt, expression on his face. Lochlan takes the opportunity to shove his way past Arthur and back into his seat, back in front of the TV again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arthur asks, voice hollow.

Lochlan nudges Arthur firmly with the burnt remains of his shoe. “What do you think it means? Now move, I think they just started playing _Suit Life on Deck._ ”

“What do you mean, _I’m_ your problem?”

“It means you’re blocking my view of the TV, genius. Not sure how else you want me to put it, unless you speak frickin’ _Klingon_.”

Arthur does not take the hint, and he certainly doesn’t move the hell out of the way. 

“Move.”

“Not until you explain what you really meant.”

Lochlan groans. “Fine. It means I hate you. Happy? Great. Now move.”

“I don’t understand,” Arthur says, frowning. “What did I ever do to hurt you?”

“You want that list chronological or alphabetical?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I died before you were even born.”

Lochlan mock-gasps. “Really? I didn’t notice! All those years I grew up without a father, and I never even knew.”

“Can you _quit it_ with the sarcasm for a whole minute, Lochlan? In case you didn’t notice, our friends are _dying_.”

Oh, Lochlan noticed alright. He noticed their blood and their body parts and their screams, just like he _noticed_ the smell of burning flesh 1500 years ago. He’d rather like to _stop_ noticing it, actually. Hence the TV.

Lochlan peers around Arthur’s bulk, struggling to catch any glimpse of the TV. London Tipton is onscreen, but he can’t tell what she’s doing or saying. “Oh, really? Is _that_ why we’re in a hospital? It all makes so much sense, Arthur, thank you for clearing that up. What do you want from me, a brooding poem about my feelings?”

“A little compassion would be nice.”

Lochlan barks out a harsh, mirthless laugh. “Oh that’s rich, coming from Mr. Genocidal Dictator over here.”

Arthur bristles at the comment. Clearly Lochlan has touched a nerve. _Good_ . “I wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“Is that why Merlin lived in fear of you? Why he waited ten years to tell you about his magic? Because you were too busy perpetuating your father’s genocide to support him? Because he was scared you’d _kill_ him? Mordred was practically a hero, killing off a tyrant like you. But please, go on and tell me how you weren’t that bad.”

“I wouldn’t have killed him,” Arthur mutters defensively. 

“No, you would’ve just tossed him out like he was the gay kid you never wanted.” Lochlan gives him what may be the most condescending thumbs-up known to man. “Way to go, _Dad_. That’s so much better than the alternative.”

“I _accepted_ magic in the end, though. I embraced it in my final moments.”

“And we’re all _so proud_ of you for it. Would you like your ‘Too Little, Too Late’ Award in the form of a trophy or a certificate? Maybe hang it up next to your ‘Doing the Bare Minimum’ Badge?”

Quiet, subdued, almost trembling. Arthur dangles on the precipice between rage and sadness. His expression flickers back and forth, as if he’s not sure whether to scream or cry or both.

Luckily, Lochlan knows all the buttons to push to keep Arthur teetering into ‘scream’ territory.

“Of course, kicking people out is pretty much your M.O at this point. Remind me again what you did to Mom all those years ago?”

And there it is. The rage. Bingo.

“You don’t know _anything_ ,” Arthur hisses. “So shut up before you make yourself look like a fool.”

“Why? Everyone always says I’m so much like my father, I might as well look the part too.”

Arthur shakes his head, a distinct edge of contempt and even a bit of hurt sharpening his movements. “You know, all this fighting will do _nothing_ to help Gwen - who, for the record, is _dying_ right now!”

A little boy, having nightmares, creeping into his mother’s bedroom in search of comfort, only to find her crying herself to sleep. A little boy, who crawls into bed next to her and hugs her and says _**“It’ll be alright, Mum. Father may be gone, but I won’t leave you.”** _A little boy, who pretends he doesn’t see her quickly dry her eyes, pretends he doesn’t hear her breathing hitch or feel her fingers shake as they card through his hair. 

A little boy, lifted into his surrogate father’s arms as flames attack them from all sides. A little boy, watching as he’s carried away from everyone and everything he’s ever known. A little boy, whose mother’s painful dying screams stain his ears, who wakes up in the middle of the night for weeks thereafter so he can puke up the remnant stench of rotting flesh. 

A little boy, who dies of old age, because everyone dies and everyone dies alone.

Within instants of Arthur’s enraged, terrified cry, a million thoughts pass through Lochlan’s mind. A million jokes, a million quips, a million stupid nothings to distract from the problem. Anything to get them to stop talking about death, so much death, doesn’t Arthur _know_ that Lochlan has seen too much death in his life and wants to _stop_ seeing death, doesn’t he know that Lochlan would do anything for it all to go away, to pretend it’s not happening?

_“I’m sure the doctors will finish the operation without a hitch. It’s not exactly brain surgery - just abdominal surgery!”_

_“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “The consequences of your actions. My name is Morgana and I’m here to kill everyone your son cares about.”_

_“Why did the deadbeat dad cross the road? To get to the side his son wasn’t on!”_

Well. Lochlan is done pretending, and he’s done distracting from the heart of the matter.

He rises to his feet, pins Arthur with a glare the weight of every decade he spent hating his father. He stabs his finger into Arthur’s chest, pushes him. 

In a low, demanding, _broken_ voice, Lochlan says, “No, Arthur, she’s _not_ dying. She’s already _dead_. She died the moment you did.”

Arthur freezes, stunned. He doesn’t hem or haw or gape or stammer. He doesn’t turn purple in the face and shout about how Lochlan has no right to disrespect his father in this way. Gwen doesn’t appear out of nowhere to order Lochlan into his room so they can all pretend he doesn’t hear the smacks and crashes woven into her and Arthur’s ensuing argument. 

Instead, he keeps his shaky gaze locked on Lochlan, petrified by what Lochlan can only hope is the crushing realization of how horrible he is. Then, in a voice quieter than the air vent, he whispers, “What?”

But how _dare_ he, how dare that bastard sound and look so sad and so broken and so confused, how dare he act like a victim when all he’s _ever_ been is the bad guy? How dare he sound as if his entire world has shattered, when _Lochlan’s_ world has had its sharp glass edges lodged into his chest since the moment he was born?

Arthur wants to act like he’s in pain? Like he’s oh so damaged and troubled, like he has gaping wounds that need to be healed? Arthur wants to act like his pain even _remotely_ compares to the pain he’s caused?

Well, Lochlan can certainly oblige him. Arthur wants to pretend he’s the victim? Lochlan can make him a victim for real.

When Lochlan was nine, he made a promise. He promised that he would avenge the trauma his family had suffered. He promised that he would punch Arthur Pendragon in the face.

_Crunch!_

The moment Lochlan’s fist makes contact with Arthur’s nose, his knuckles throb. His muscles burn. His eyes sting with righteous fury. And all the neurons in his brain flare to life.

Arthur staggers backwards, almost falls over, but regains his balance. Lochlan almost doesn’t see it through the film of hot tears _flooding_ his vision. He cannot see Arthur or the waiting room or the clock tick-tick-ticking to Gwen’s impending fate. All he can see is a little boy, sitting at Uncle Leon’s bedside on a day when his depression is so bad that he can’t even get up, playing out elaborate stories with his toys in an attempt to life his uncle's spirits, watching Leon’s eyes grow misty as he says, _**“You remind me of your father, you know.”**_ All he can see is a little boy, then and there vowing to _never_ be like his father.

But he’s not that little boy anymore. He’s not too weak to look after his family anymore, not too sad to stand up for what’s right. He’s a man now. And he’s going to give that bastard what’s coming to him.

_“You killed my mom, you son of a bitch!”_

A woman, smiling broadly as she teaches him to read through song. A woman, cackling as she chases him down the halls. A woman, twirling Merlin while teaching him to dance, causing him to blush in such a way that makes all three of them laugh. A woman, holding her son against her hip as she takes him to watch his uncles swordfight on the training pitch. A woman, putting a needle and thread in his hands and gently guiding his fingers through the stitches, humming in his ear while he sits in her lap. 

A woman, who stands on the parapets and gazes so longingly at her kingdom, so horribly lost in thought that she almost forgets her son is standing next to her. A woman, who cries herself to sleep every night. A woman, whose face bears a chronic sadness that is present in everything she does, that lingers like a veil over her all her tight smiles and forced laughs. A woman, banished and slandered and disowned, then put in a position of power she wasn’t prepared for, then abandoned there to fend for herself against the council almost entirely on her own. A woman, who has to toughen up for the good of the kingdom, and for the good of her son. A woman, who tries so hard to pretend she’s happy and cheerful for her son that she doesn’t notice how much her charade hurts him.

A woman, slowly crumbling under the weight of all the pressure Arthur forced her to endure alone. A woman, shattered by grief in such a way that nothing can ever repair her just right, shattered so extensively that some of the pieces are missing. 

A woman, trapped under a plank of wood that Llacheu cannot lift off of her no matter how hard his puny child body tries. A woman, ripped to pieces by the sword wounds dealt by invaders. A woman, who reaches a shaky, bloody hand up to his face and tries to tell him how much she loves him, but is too weak to manage even that.

A woman, who is already long dead by the time Merlin barges through the door - Merlin, who has little time to mourn his oldest friend, instead sweeping Llacheu into his arms and making a run for it before the fire can claim her son too. 

A woman, whose features eventually get forgotten by her son, one by one, until he is old and grey and dying and weeps to think that he can only remember her by the smell of her burning skin, and the words **_“You’re so much like your father.”_**

In Lochlan’s fantasies, Arthur falls to his knees and grovels at Lochlan’s feet for forgiveness. Arthur sobs and sobs and sobs, he spends decades crying every tear Merlin and Gwen have ever shedded, and when he’s done there are no tears left for Lochlan's family to cry. Their eyes are dry, and they all walk away as Arthur drowns in his own tears, and they never think about him again.

This...doesn’t happen.

Arthur just stares. Silently. With wide eyes, as though some goddamn epiphany has struck him like lightning.

So Lochlan continues to cry out. Continues to shout. Anything to spark a reaction from Arthur. “She loved you, you dick, and you _destroyed her!_ You destroyed everything!”

Lochlan’s not sure when his knees give out, but by the time he’s able to control his hyperventilating sobs he has already collapsed to the floor. He doesn’t have the strength to stand back up again, to pull his face out of his hands, to look up at the man who has haunted him since medieval times. He makes no effort to do so. 

“Everyone was _always_ thinking about you! Even when they were smiling,” Lochlan tearfully hiccups. “They were too busy missing _you_ to be _happy_.” He wraps his arms around himself, anything to erase the chill left by his mother’s absence. 

Still Arthur says nothing. Lochlan doesn’t know if that’s a good thing.

“Where were you?” he whimpers, voice so hoarse and broken that it’s nearly a whisper. “They said you were so strong and compassionate, but you _died_. You died, and you broke everyone’s hearts. Where is the strength and compassion in that?” 

“I - I didn’t -”

Emboldened by Arthur’s stammering half-excuse, Lochlan snaps his gaze up to him with righteous rage. Wipes his tears away. “ _Where were you_ ? If you hadn’t died, Mom would’ve been happy. Merlin would’ve been happy. Leon and Percival would’ve been happy. We could’ve been a _family_ .” Once more his vision clouds over with tears, replacing the ones he had wiped away. “But you _died_ . And you destroyed my family before I even _met_ them. If you hadn’t died, they wouldn’t have been so busy missing you that they...they…”

It takes a long time for Lochlan to finish the sentence. He knows how it ends, has known it since he could first form sentences, but has never had the guts to say it aloud.

A shuddery breath. Shaking shoulders. Tremulous hands. An averted gaze.

“If they weren’t so busy missing _you_ ,” he croaks. “They would’ve had time to love _me_.”

Arthur has nothing to say to that. He just sits on the ground in front of Lochlan, expression unreadable, and reaches forward to try and place a comforting hand on his son’s shoulder.

Lochlan shrugs him off. “ _Don’t touch me, you dick_ ,” he hisses. “It’s all your fault. It’s _your_ fault, _you_ broke them so badly that nothing I ever did was good enough to cheer them up. Don’t think we can _hug_ , and sing frickin’ _Kumbaya_ , and pretend you didn’t _ruin my life!”_

He pushes Arthur away with as much force as he can inject into his wobbly arms, then strikes up to his feet and shakily stomps away. He stumbles over to the counter, or at least what feels like the counter. He rests his elbows on it, shoves his face into his hands, and decides not to care about whether his tears will damage the linoleum. 

“Lochlan,” Arthur finally says, carefully and quietly, once a decent puddle has accumulated on the countertop. “It wasn’t your responsibility to look after them.”

“What would _you_ know about responsibility?”

“I was a king, y’know.” His words are meant to be snarky, but there is no humor in his tone.

“Yeah,” Lochlan scoffs. “For, what, five years? Lucky for you, you died just in time to miss all the good stuff. Y'know, insurrections, lifting the magic ban, Merlin and Gwen getting chewed out for lifting the magic ban, invading armies burning the whole place to the ground..." He shakes his head. "You weren’t there. But I _was_.”

“Is that what this is about? You’re blaming me for being murdered?”

“You were kinda asking for it,” Lochlan says. He clenches his fists. “You could have easily chosen not to persecute magic users, or kill Mordred’s girlfriend, or alienate an entire minority group within your community. You could have shown Merlin that you were safe to share his magic with. You could have chosen not to banish Mom. You could’ve given the Disir a different answer.”

“Merlin told me -”

“Oh, so you only do what Merlin says? You don’t think for yourself?” Lochlan rolls his eyes. At least the more bitter direction of the conversation has helped him stop crying for just a while. 

Arthur starts to speak, but cuts himself off. “You’re right.”

“I mean, c’mon, how old - wait, what?”

Arthur takes a deep breath. “You’re right, Lochlan. I never did think much for myself. I always just did whatever anyone else told me to. Barely had any agency in my own life. I told myself that I had moved on from that, that after stepping out of my father’s legacy I had become my own person.” His expression is self-deprecating and sad ( **_everyone is always sad_ **), a mere mockery of a smile. “But that’s not true, is it? I may have stopped being Daddy’s good little soldier, but I never stood on my own two feet. I just found new people to follow.”

Lochlan narrows his eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

Arthur, now risen back to his feet, runs a frustrated hand through his hair and groans. “I don’t know, I just thought - I don’t know what I was thinking. It just felt like the right thing to say.” 

This time, it's Lochlan who doesn't know how to respond. He instead turns to the cup of coffee, long since forgotten until it glinted in the corner of his vision just now. He picks it up, swirls its contents, but doesn’t have the heart to drink from it.

“It was my excuse,” Arthur says at last, so suddenly that Lochlan nearly drops the mug. “That’s all it was. Raiding druid camps, banning magic - I keep telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, I was just doing what my dad would’ve wanted, and that I’m better than that now. I learned to accept magic, which I figured should somehow erase all the crimes I’ve committed against magic users. But that’s not true at all, and I only believed that to make myself feel better. I did a lot of bad things in my past life, but I let myself minimize them as 'harmless mistakes' and 'just obeying orders' to save myself from the guilt.”

For some reason, Arthur’s admission makes Lochlan feel even emptier than before.

Arthur struggles to keep his gaze locked on his son, struggles not to look away and psych himself out of saying whatever is clearly on the tip of his tongue. And despite every muscle burning for him to insult Arthur again, Lochlan remains silent. 

“But that’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?” And damn Arthur to Hell for sounding so _knowing_ as he speaks. “You want me to apologize for hurting your family, for ruining your life. You hate me and you want to hear me suffer.”

“Damn right I do.”

“But you don’t.” 

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

Arthur holds up his hands placatingly. “Yeah, you hate me because you think I’m a terrible person who didn’t treat your parents with the respect they deserved. And you’re valid to think that. Hell, you’re probably right. But don’t lie to yourself. That’s not the main reason you hate me. The truth is, you aren’t pissed because I died. You’re pissed because I died and _they_ couldn’t move on.”

Lochlan sets the mug down on the counter again with a firm thud. “Are you trying to suggest -”

“Yes!” Arthur cries. He takes a step towards Lochlan, but instantly thinks better of it and steps back. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting. You did _everything_ you could to make them happy, but nothing worked, did it? And you _want_ to be pissed off at them for it. You want to scream in their faces and ask why you were never good enough for them. But you _know_ it wouldn’t be fair to get so upset around them, because _they_ tried their best too.”

“Damn right they did! And screw you for -” 

Arthur continues, interrupting, not caring what Lochlan was going to say. Or, perhaps, knowing _full well_ what Lochlan was going to say. “So you turned all that hate, all that anger, towards me. Towards _yourself_.”

Lochlan coldly folds his arms over his chest. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Better than most,” Arthur confesses with a subdued shrug. “I went through the same thing in my past life.”

“...What?”

Arthur doesn’t respond immediately. Maybe he’s being a theatrical prick, maybe he forgot what he was going to say, maybe he’s too busy settling into the chair on the other side of the waiting room to speak, maybe he’s just trying to sort his thoughts.

Trying. That’s all anyone seems to do these days. Try and try, but always fail.

Except Morgana, of course. She did a pretty good job of blowing up their house with everyone in it.

“My mom,” Arthur slowly says. “She died in childbirth. I heard all these stories about how amazing life was when she was still around, and people would tell me how happy and carefree my dad was before her death. And for a long time, I... _resented_ her...for dying, and leaving me alone to put up with this angry shell of my father. So I did everything Uther asked of me, I practically worshipped the ground he walked on, because I wanted him to be _happy_ for once. Because I had an obligation to fix what I felt had been my mother's mistakes.”

Lochlan’s grip on the edge of the counter tightens. “Are you comparing Gwen and Merlin to Uther _freaking_ Pendragon?"

“Of course not!” Arthur cries, and looks ready to start shouting again, but then takes a deep breath and resumes his calm - if strained - tone. “But the situations are similar. The only difference is, Uther didn’t actually try his best with me. Gwen and Merlin _did_.”

“They tried harder than _you_ did, at any rate,” Lochlan says, half-heartedly, weakly, just another _failed attempt_ at pushing himself far, far away from what they both know Arthur is about to say.

Arthur doesn’t take the bait. “Uther didn’t love me. But Gwen and Merlin did love you. They loved you so much it hurt. And that’s the worst part, isn’t it? If they were jerks, you could be a jerk right back and call it a day. But you can’t, because they’re good people.”

Lochlan hates the way his voice sounds so croaky and rough as he mutters, “The best.”

“And you don’t _want_ to hate them,” Arthur says. He looks at Lochlan with wet, soulful eyes. “Do you? You love them, and they love you, and after everything they sacrificed to raise you up right, they deserve your kindness.”

Lochlan nods. It’s a weak, quivering nod, and he’s not even sure if it’s an actual nod and not just an extension of the tremors shaking his body. “They do,” he whispers.

Arthur is on the verge of crying too, now. “So instead of hating them, you hate the closest asshole - me - and then you hate yourself too for good measure.” He pauses, takes the time to look at Lochlan, really _look_ at him. Then with a smirk, he adds, “I can’t blame you for picking on _me_ , though. I will openly admit that I can be a bit of an asshole sometimes.”

Unlike Arthur, Lochlan _does_ take the bait. Chuckling through the tears he teasingly asks, “Only sometimes?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Okay, fine, a lot of the time.” He lets the moment linger - them, ex-father and ex-son, standing in a hospital’s private waiting room, empty of all life except for two damaged, reincarnated souls. 

Eventually, much to their mutual reluctance, Arthur ends the moment, and plunges them both back head-first into the high-strung emotions of the day. “But - but you have to know, Lochlan. If you never address the root of the issue, if you never talk out your problems with Gwen and Merlin, then it will only keep building. You will keep clinging to this grudge until you die.”

Lochlan hesitates. “But it’ll make them so _sad_.” And it would. He can picture it now, their twin faces of misery, internalizing everything he said and hating themselves for all the ways they made him feel - which wasn’t even intentional on their part! 

They tried. Dammit, they tried so hard. 

Lochlan remembers once seeing Merlin lay in bed with a knife in his hands, pressed to his chest, before setting it on the nightstand and muttering to himself, _**“No. Llacheu needs you to be strong. You can do this. Do it for Cheu.”**_ Merlin had gotten to his feet after that, rushed out of the bedroom before he could lose his resolve again, and then spent the rest of the day dazzling Llacheu with the brightest smiles in his arsenal.

But Llacheu had known. He had seen what dark thoughts Merlin spent his mind contemplating. And Lochlan knows those thoughts never went away - he just got better at hiding them.

“And that’s okay,” Arthur insists. He leans forward in his seat, clasps his hands together. “You are not responsible for protecting their feelings - or for fixing my mistakes. You can appreciate everything Gwen and Merlin did for you, while also letting yourself admit that it wasn’t always enough. That’s not their fault, and it’s not _yours_ either. Humans are traumatized, flawed people - and that doesn’t change the moment they become parents.”

Despite what Arthur was probably hoping would result from his little speech, Lochlan does not, in fact, say _“Oh wow, Arthur, you were so right and I was so wrong, thank you for your wisdom, I’ll get right on that.”_

Lochlan just takes a few deep breaths, and slides into the seat next to Arthur. “That’s all well and good,” he says at last. “But I might never get the chance, y’know. Gwen is still dying.”

Arthur’s fragile half-smile falls. “R-right.”

They spend the next hour in near silence. The TV still plays (another d-com, from the looks of it), but neither of them pay attention long enough to understand the plot. They just sit there, silent and unmoving. If Lochlan were to hazard a guess, Arthur’s thinking about their conversation, about his past, about his mistakes - just as much as Lochlan is. 

At 3:24 AM, the head surgeon comes into the room and gives them the news that Gwen's in stable condition, but can only have one visitor at a time. Arthur doesn’t even offer the spot to Lochlan, but Lochlan is too happy to get pissed at him for it. Gwen’s okay. She’s gonna _live_. 

* * *

It takes two days for Merlin’s exploded remains to piece themselves together, and another day after that for him to gather enough strength to find some clothes, crawl his way to the closest phonebooth, and call all the nearby hospitals.

The receptionist lets Lochlan steal the landline for a bit, long enough to talk to Merlin and rejoice at the news that he’s okay. But then Arthur learns who’s on the other end of the line, and pushes Lochlan to the side to claim the call for himself. Selfish bastard.

Arthur damn near cries at the sound of Merlin’s voice - well, at the sound of _anyone’s_ voice, really, since it’s mostly been just the two them for the past few days. Everyone but Gwen has woken up by now, but they all still slip in and out of consciousness a lot. Lancelot, for his part, acts _really_ loopy while drugged up.

“Merlin’s a block away from the house,” Arthur says after hanging up the phone. “He’s too tired to teleport, but I pulled my car into the hospital garage yesterday so -”

“Yeah, sure.” Lochlan waves him off. “Go be a knight in shining armor for a bit. I’ll stay here at Mission Control in the meantime. And - and Arthur, make sure to swing by Merlin’s place on the way back.” At Arthur’s questioning look, he huffs and explains. “My _suitcase_ is there, dumbass, and I’d really rather not spend the rest of the week wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt that has the Blue Screen of Death on it.”

Arthur casts an appraising glance at the attire in question. “Fair point. I wonder if Merlin would let me use his shower.”

“You actually shower?” Lochlan shrugs. “And yet somehow you’re still a sleazy sack of grease. Wonders never cease.”

Arthur snorts, jabs his elbows into Lochlan’s ribs. “Speak for yourself, Mr. Dandruff With Legs.”

So Arthur leaves, and Lochlan spends the rest of the day by Gwen’s bedside. Thinking about what Arthur had told him. Thinking about what he’s going to say to Gwen when she wakes up. Thinking about what he’s going to say to _Merlin_. 

But that’s for later. That’s for a distant future, once they’ve defeated Morgana and saved the day and fulfilled whatever bullshit purpose destiny brought them all back for. Once Gwen is healed, and Merlin is back to full strength, and the team is whole again, then they'll talk. 

And Lochlan will _make_ them whole - 

No. No he won’t. It’s not his job to hold the team together, or kiss their wounds or make everyone happy all the time. He will do his best, he will try, and he will love them. That's all he _can_ do.

And for now, he will sit next to Gwen and ask one of the nurses if he can borrow their phone. “She really likes music, and I thought if I played some…”

The nurse smiles - “Say no more” - and places a busted-up Samsung with a cactus-pattern Pop Socket into his palm. She tells him the password and tell him to let her know when the battery runs low.

He goes on YouTube and types in the name of that one Japanese song he knows Gwen likes a lot (oddly not Vocaloid). It’s called ‘ _Tsunaida Te’_ by Lil'B, and he’s not even gonna _try_ to pronounce that. He only knows it’s her favorite because even when she puts her Spotify playlist on shuffle, she always makes sure to start with that one. 

He’s always wondered what the lyrics mean, but she always looks so damn _peaceful_ when listening to and singing it, closing her eyes and resting her head back and just soaking up the sensations of the world around her, sometimes getting up and beckoning Lochlan to dance with her if they aren’t already in the car. It doesn’t seem right to break the moment, so he never asks.

The song has been on loop for about twenty minutes now, but he’s not sick of it yet. Its cheery yet soft blend of rock, instrumentals, and rap has a distinct way of reminding him of Gwen. Or maybe it’s just because she listens to it so often.

Once more the song begins. _“Meguri megutte mo mata koko de aitai…”_

“Ah...is that...Lil’B...I hear?” rasps a faint yet familiar voice. 

Lochlan’s head immediately snaps to the direction of the voice. And there she is, brown eyes cracked open and chest heaving with every laborious, half-mechanized breath. Looking on the verge of death, but _here._ Awake. Alive. And not too bad, all things considered.

“Gwen!” He wastes no time flinging himself onto her hospital bed and wrapping his arms around her, pressing his face into her shoulder and holding her tight. Because she's _alive_. She didn’t die this time.

“Hi there, Lochlan,” she croaks.

Lochlan parts the hug long enough to flash her a smile. “You sound terrible.” 

“You _look_ terrible.” Gwen attempts to sit up, but aborts the action halfway through and settles for flopping backward on her pillow instead. “How long was…”

“A few days,” Lochlan admits. His knee-jerk instinct is to joke about it, but he’s trying to move past that. Communicate, articulate, and for the love of god don’t misdirect with humor again. You can’t heal if you don’t talk about it. “It was pretty touch and go for a while, but you pulled through.”

Gwen quirks a brow, understandably perplexed by his unprompted honesty, and the look on her face is almost enough to make his new Full-Disclosure Agreement worth it. “...alright…” 

For a few moments, she says nothing to him. Just studies him closely, as if seeing him for the first time. The only sound filling the room is that of the song’s second rap verse.

“What’s that look for? Is there something on my nose?” He scrubs at his nose for effect, garnering a breathy giggle from her. 

She just shakes her head in lieu of a response and rests her head back, eyes closed in the way they always are whenever she hears this song. The way someone closes their eyes when reclining in the field on a sunny day, picnic blanket below them and a cool breeze rolling above. 

But there is no field or picnic blanket or cool breeze. Instead, there are rhythmically beeping machines and a big window, and a stranger’s phone at half charge blasting the credits theme from one of those Japanese anime Gwen is so passionate about. 

Instead of questioning it and breaking her spell of serenity, though, Lochlan just tosses his head back and closes his eyes too. As he does so, the song begins once again, ever on infinite loop. 

“Did I ever tell you…” A brief coughing spell interrupts her. “What this song means?” 

Without opening his eyes, Lochlan shakes his head. “Not that I can remember. I like to imagine they’re secretly saying a bunch of f-words.”

Gwen reaches through the tangles of her IV to weakly swat his knee. “Gwaine is a horrible influence on you.”

“On the contrary, Guinevere, _I_ am a horrible influence on _him_.” When it becomes clear that she won’t dignify him with a reply until he asks her about the song, he caves. “Fine, I’ll bite. What does the song mean?”

“Well the title ‘ _Tsunaida Te’_ means ‘Hand in Hand,” she says.

He groans playfully. “Oh god, this isn’t one of those sappy romance songs is it?”

“Don’t be silly, Cheu. It’s about two people who are troubled, and really only have each other. So they stick together, walking hand in hand, as they brave life together, determined to stay optimistic and make each other’s lives better.”

“Aha! It _is_ a love song!” He puts on a show of being deeply offended, hand pressed to his chest and everything. “I can’t believe you’d trick me into listening to a love song of all things. Really, Gwen, I thought I could trust you.”

With an affectionate eye roll, she says, “Love can come in more ways than romantic. I like to think of the song as platonic, actually. And...” She pauses, fiddles with the hem of her bed’s starchy white comforter, bits her lower lip - which she always does when she’s about to say something embarrassing. Eager for more teasing material, Lochlan leans in with interest. 

He does not, in fact, get more teasing material. 

“I’ve always interpreted it as a mother singing to her son.”

It takes a few moments for him to fully register what she said. And when he does, he finds himself unable to say anything at all. And just as he finally opens his mouth to do so -

“S-sorry!” she stammers, slightly weary as the exhaustion starts to set back in. “I didn’t mean to sound so forward with that. I mean, I know we’re not exactly ‘mother and son’ anymore, because that would be weird, and neither of us want our relationship to be weird, but I still remember what it was like to -”

“Gwen.”

“ - and it’s just that this song has been a great comfort for me, even before Merlin restored my memories, and back then I could never put my finger on why but I think it was because a part of me remembered you even then, and -”

“ _Gwen_.”

She takes a long, raspy inhale, and coughs a bit. “Sorry.”

“Y’know, it might be a little less ‘weird’ if you told me more about why you think this animoo thing -”

“Ani _me_ ,” she corrects on reflex.

“ - so ‘accurately depicts us’ or whatever.” He makes sure to exaggerate his finger-quotes gesture as much as possible for added effect. “Or something like that. I don’t know if that’ll _actually_ make it less weird or not - mostly I’m just curious.”

She laughs. Lochlan likes the way she laughs these days. It’s less burdened. Less sad and depressed. Odds are it’s because Arthur is back with her again, but he likes to pretend it’s because this new lifetime has allowed her the therapy and mental health help she hadn’t received back then. He likes to pretend that if she had only gotten the support she so desperately needed, maybe Gwen’s first life wouldn’t have been so miserable.

Maybe _all_ their first lives wouldn’t have been so miserable.

“It’s just little things here and there,” Gwen confesses. The song in question still plays in the background. “Lines that remind me of your childhood, or...or my emotional state after Arthur’s death.” Her lucidity is beginning to slip again, but she’s fighting it.

At this point it’s nearly a Pavlovian response for him to spit out some insult at the sound of Arthur’s name, but with a herculean amount of effort he’s able to restrain himself. He and his former father still aren’t on great terms, and things are still super frosty between the two of them, but they’re both actively trying to get along. And the first step to accomplishing that is to turn off his 5 PM “Roasting Arthur Power Hour” Alarm. 

Gwen lets out a weary sigh, seemingly unaware of his internal struggle. “I’m too tired to translate the whole song right now, though. It’s too early to boot up my Japanese Brain. Maybe...maybe later?”

A queen sits on the throne, face stern and stoic yet eyes so horribly wet around the edges, but her face breaks into a small attempt at a half-smile as her son wanders into the Throne Room. He asks her to play Knights And Bandits with him. She pulls him into her lap and apologizes, and says she’s busy, says the kingdom won’t run itself, and says _“Maybe later, okay? But I’m sure Merlin would be happy to play with you, why don’t you ask him?”_ She thinks he can’t see the miserable, mournful look she gives him as he toddles back out into the hall. 

Lochlan shakes the thought out of his mind. That’s in the past. 

Well. Not entirely. He, Gwen and Merlin still need to have a Talk. Something Lochlan is not at all excited about, but is gradually psyching himself up for. If he says the right stuff, if things go as well as he hopes, it might finally close the unspoken rift between him and the people who raised him for all these years. Lochlan might finally be able to put this centuries-old grudge to rest.

Gwen yawns, and then puts a hand to her side where the stitches are. Her face is contorted in pain, but Lochlan finds a strange sort of comfort knowing it’s not the emotional kind for once. 

“I...love you…” she mumbles tiredly. Her head falls to the side, eyes slipping closed. The latest iteration of ‘ _Tsunaida Te’_ chimes out its final chords, before a new one begins anew.

Lochlan tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “I know, Gwen. I love you too.”

“I never...never said...d...it…”

Clasping her hand between two of his own he says, “If by ‘never’ you mean ‘at least five times a day’, then sure.”

She shakes her head, but with how wobbly and tired she is it really just flops around on her pillow. “N-no...I mean...when...when I was...dying…”

Fire. Screams. Blood. Fingers ghosting his cheek, smearing red on his face. A look of distress staining her bloodied features as she tries to say something, but finds herself too close to death to speak. 

Llacheu had spent many years thereafter, trying to determine once and for all what she had intended for her last words to be. Replaying that moment over and over, scrutinizing each movement of her mouth in an effort to read her lips post-mortem. 

He knew she was saying how much she loved him. He knew she was saying goodbye. (And in his nightmares, she was telling him how much he looked like his father). 

“I wanted...to say…” She drifts off for a moment, and Lochlan almost fears she’s missed her second chance to say it, but then, wispily and wearily: “I...I love you, Llacheu…”

Then, at long last, Gwen is asleep once more.

And it’s a good thing too, or else she would see her son crying silently yet violently, squeezing her hand like it was a lifeline, and whispering out, “I love you too, Mom.”

Two months from now, Morgana will be arrested. Merlin will strip her of her magic, because he refuses to let her die at his hands again even though he’s the only one powerful enough to finish her off. There will be a criminal trial, and she will be sent to prison. Those in the Round Table who are brave enough to do so will begin planning their first visitations.

And amidst prison talk and reuniting with Percival's reincarnation and the start of a new semester at Penn State, Lochlan will send a text to Merlin and Gwen. He will ask Merlin to teleport them to a nice city of his choice, someplace with a decent park that’s fun to walk around at night. He will buy them both dinner, and they will catch up, and they will reminisce all they damn well please on the good old days.

And when there’s a lull in the conversation, Lochlan will gather up all the courage that Merlin and Gwen and Leon and Percival fostered within him through their teachings, and he will say, “Gwen, Merlin, there’s something I need to tell you.”

He will talk. They will not interrupt him, not even once. No matter how much it hurts him to do so, Lochlan will keep his gaze firmly fixed on them, and he will not once look away from their shining, tear-stricken eyes. He will tell them about how much he loves them, how much he values and appreciates everything they did for him. He will tell them that he understands it wasn’t their fault for being traumatized and heartbroken, and that he admires the strength it took for them to make the most of a bad situation. 

But he will also tell them that the way things were back then, made him feel like he wasn’t good enough for them. Like they would never love him as much as they loved Arthur. Like he was just a defective extension of Arthur, and they were all trying to make him fit the box of being Arthur’s replacement and then being disappointed when he didn’t live up to that impossible standard. 

Lochlan will talk and talk and talk, and talk until he can talk no more, until he’s run out of things to say, until Gwen and Merlin have run out of tears to cry.

They will not make excuses, they will not ask for forgiveness, and they will not fall into spirals of self-loathing. Gwen will bravely dry her eyes and say, “I’m so, _so_ sorry we made you feel that way. And I appreciate you telling us about it, so we can make sure we never make you feel like that again.” 

Merlin won’t say anything at all. He’ll simply stand up, walk over to Lochlan’s side of the table, and pull him into a bone-crushing hug. Gwen will also get up and follow suit. The hug will last for several minutes, just the three of them hugging it out in the restaurant portion of the Seattle Space Needle, crying and embracing as city lights spin softly around them from all sides. It will look odd to the other patrons, but no one will comment on it, and frankly the three of them won’t even care.

After 1500 years, Lochlan will finally be free.

But for now, he sits in a stiff hospital chair, holding his mother’s hand and crying. 

* * *

Despite making amends, Arthur and Lochlan still don’t fully get along. 

Arthur has no patience for Lochlan’s maliciously defiant attitude, and Lochlan has no patience for Arthur’s perfectionist authoritarianism. Arthur often shouts when he doesn’t get his way, and Lochlan often hurls passive aggressive insults instead of properly communicating his feelings when he’s frustrated. They get into a lot of fights, and experience a lot of miscommunication that leads to even more fights. Yeah, the whole fire-and-oil dynamic they’ve got going on was really just inevitable.

All the drama between them may just be water under the bridge now, but that water hasn’t exactly dried yet, and they’re both still a bit soaked.

But they don’t hate each other anymore, which is a step in the right direction. They actively try to get along now. They talk about their issues instead of letting it fester into a grudge. They give each other awkward hugs at group reunions. Sometimes Lochlan texts his dad for advice, and maybe sends him the occasional meme; Arthur texts Lochlan with links to obscure yet profitable scholarships, and emails him invitations to get coffee. They attend each other’s graduations, and Lochlan is Arthur’s Best Man at his and Gwen’s wedding (Merlin is officiating it). 

They don’t like each other by any stretch of the imagination, but they do love each other, and the’re _trying_.

That’s what it all boils down to in the end, isn’t it? Trying. The fact that they mutually put so much effort and emotion into overcoming their flaws so they can get along, even though it would be easier to give up, speaks greater volumes than any easy success ever could. 

So they keep trying. After every fight, after every spat, after every week of frosty back-and-forths, they apologize and work through it. Not because Gwen wants them to get along or because Merlin asked them to, but for themselves. Because Lochlan is tired of being so bitter and insecure all the time; because Arthur is tire of seeing Uther’s face every time he looks in the mirror.

They don’t do typical father-son stuff. They don’t play catch in the park or go fishing on weekends (they tried that once and both hated it). Arthur doesn’t teach Lochlan how to use a barbecue - because none of them own a barbecue - and Lochlan doesn’t introduce Arthur to all his new boyfriends - because Arthur will only tease him over it.

Instead, they share memes about Arthurian mythos and exchange inside jokes like it’s a new form of currency. They stay up late comparing notes on their mutually shitty childhoods. Lochlan introduces Arthur to his favorite EDM songs and gets pissed when Arthur accidentally breaks the LEGO Lighthouse Siege set that took him over two hours to build. Arthur likes to send Lochlan random nerd-adjacent merch (because gifts are how he shows affection and also because he practically _hemorrhages_ money), and then blows a gasket when Lochlan accidentally leaves his Rolex in the wash. 

That Rolex thing leads to a four-week silent treatment standoff, which ends up getting hilariously resolved at Thanksgiving, via a literal brawl over who gets to eat the last slice of Lancelot’s famous pumpkin pie. Gwaine referees it. Merlin and Elyan make bets, and Merlin wins most of them. Percival eats the last piece when no one is looking.

It’s not the perfect happy ending everyone was hoping for, but such endings seldom exist - especially when it comes to family. For instance: Gwaine’s parents still refuse to ‘let a goddamn queer on their property’; Leon still isn’t on speaking terms with his abusive mother; Percival’s dad is still in jail for embezzlement; Lancelot still doesn’t know who his birth parents are; Gwen and Elyan’s parents are still divorced. Pretty much everyone comes from a terrible home life. 

But in Lochlan’s professional opinion, all those assholes don’t matter. What matters is the here and now - the people you love, and those who love you back. The people you try for.

And Arthur, for his many faults, might just be someone worth trying for.

**Author's Note:**

> bonus points to anyone who can understand even a word of this. i wrote the bulk of this after midnight and edited it in about 10 minutes. also after midnight. so uhhhhh screw quality amiright
> 
> bonus BONUS points to anyone who looks up the english lyrics for " tsunaida te" and realizes just how PERFECT of a fit it is for lochlan and gwen. we can all cry about it together
> 
> also, lil easter egg: the LEGO Lighthouse Siege set is actually something i used to own! i had to give the parts away a few months ago due to Complicated Life Reasons, but that little Echo Zane figurine will always live on in my heart TnT
> 
> all songs featured: "people become ghosts" by [ive], "happy days" by GHOST, and "tsunaida te" by Lil'b
> 
> anyway, all you need to know is stan lochlan, stan gwen, and listen to vocaloid. that is all


End file.
